1. Field of the Invention
The present subject matter relates to running native computer programs in a virtualized environment on a computer system, and more specifically, to allow the native application to access a database in the virtualized environment.
2. Description of Related Art
Many computer programs (sometimes called applications) used by businesses are written in legacy computer languages such as COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/1 or other older computer languages. In many cases, those applications were written many years ago, but since they adequately fulfill a business need, they have not been replaced or re-written in a different, more modern, computer language.
Computer systems continue to evolve over time, with changes to both hardware and software. A modern computer may be hundreds of times more powerful than a computer of 20 years ago costing the same amount. The system software running on computer systems has also evolved. In the early days of computers, a program may have run directly on the computer, but operating systems appeared that could provide certain services to programs, such as control of input/output devices and file systems. Operating systems also began to allow for multiple programs to run on a single computer, appearing to run them “simultaneously.”
The Java software platform provides a variety of capabilities for computer systems including a virtualized environment for running applications through the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). A JVM has the capability to execute programs that have been compiled to a standardized intermediate format called Java bytecode programs. One way of creating Java bytecode programs is by using the Java programming language and compiling that into Java bytecode. The JVM has a just-in-time compiler that translates the Java bytecode into native processor instructions at run-time and caches the native code in memory during execution.